What Are The Valve Regional Standings (VRS)?

Counter-Strike is a detailed and complex ecosystem, with many rules, systems, and intricacies to navigate. Fans of our beautiful game – casuals and diehards alike – would be forgiven for struggling to understand some of the finer points. One such example of this is the Valve Regional Standings (VRS). This is the new method through which Valve determines who gets the coveted invites to the Majors, and is a huge change to the old MRQ format. Today, we’re going to run through the VRS – what it is, how it works, and how you can understand it moving forward. It’s a complex topic, but we’ll make it as simple to understand as possible. Let’s jump in and find out how the VRS system works.

What is CS2 VRS?

The Valve Regional Standings are Valve’s official ranking system for the professional Counter-Strike 2 scene. Essentially, they are a meticulously calculated scoreboard, broken up into each region. The VRS points that can be accrued are calculated based on four main metrics:

• Bounty Offered: Essentially, this is a team’s prize money. The VRS takes into account each team’s most recent prize money wins. The simplest way to think about this is ‘more prize money = more VRS points’.
• Bounty Collected: This is a team’s victories over other big teams. The more prize money owned by the opponents you beat, the better. Think ‘beating a team with lots of prize money = more VRS points’.
• Opponent Network: This metric looks at your victories against teams that have beaten other teams. If you beat a team who are consistently beating many others, you’ll win more VRS points.
• LAN Wins: This is a fairly simple one to understand. The VRS standings track your ten most recent wins on LAN. This is very recency-focused, with your LAN win stats decaying after a month.

Taking all of this into account, the VRS is split into three regions and one global VRS table.

Why Is The VRS Important?

Valve itself answered this question by stating that: “Teams play meaningful matches in third-party events throughout the year. To reduce the burden on Major participants and streamline the Major qualification process, we’re going to leverage those match results to identify teams that should be invited to later qualification stages.”

Essentially, the VRS is a way to simplify and streamline the way in which teams make the Major. It also adds some significant weight to the non-Major tournaments throughout the year, incentivising teams who need the points to grind tourneys they may otherwise not have attended.

How Does The VRS Look Right Now?

At the time of writing, the top ten teams on the VRS table look like this:

1. FURIA (1948 points)
2. Vitality (1908 points)
3. Falcons (1869 points)
4. The MongolZ (1859 points)
5. Aurora (1829 points)
6. Natus Vincere (1821 points)
7. MOUZ (1795 points)
8. Spirit (1773 points)
9. G2 (1755 points)
10. Legacy (1748)

Teams will be invited to tournaments based on the VRS standings at the time of the invite. For every eight VRS invites, tournament organizers get the option to invite two wildcard teams. Teams that are invited to a tournament based on their VRS standings must attend that tournament with at least a core of three players who were on the roster at the time of the VRS placement snapshot which was used by the organizer to determine the invite.

So, there you have it. The basics of what the VRS is, how it works, and why it’s important in today’s professional CS2 ecosphere. If you’ve had enough of the nerdier side of CS and want to get back to clicking heads, a good place to start is brushing up on some of the mistakes you’re making in gunfights, which you can do here. If you’re more interested in perfecting your utility so you can beat the best VRS teams in the world, check out our Utility Secrets series. As always, good luck on the grind!